Information is a duty for every citizen. A good citizen is one who learns about the harshness of other people’s lives and the injustices that may be suffered by other peoples and even other species. This information effort is necessary to raise awareness but also to take action. It is reasonable to say that the media are not playing the role they are supposed to play. They don’t always inform, sometimes they shock and manipulate us through a partial or emotional treatment of information. This is particularly true for some television media. Faced with these shortcomings, some organisations and individuals have ventured into creating content for journalistic purposes. This horizontality of information creates a plurality of discourses but also sometimes even encourages the appearance of untruths.
Raising awareness of a subject is futile if it is not followed by an inner change. It is necessary to know how to define the limits which separate information from voyeurism or information from stunnedness.
The repetition of cruel, negative or obscene images and speech can make us insensitive to the suffering of others since our brain will have assimilated these images as normal. It is therefore important to avoid repetition that would make us indifferent or even cruel. So how do we place the cursor? What is the borderline between “closing our eyes” and being an accomplice by letting “evil” penetrate our being?
It would seem that everyone has his or her own sensitivity and that everyone’s intention is motivated by different objects. It is essential to desire to preserve a certain “infantile purity”, which alone can allow us to revolt in the face of injustice when it is committed before our eyes. If you are a repeated spectator to unjust televised scenes, you will accept them and you will not be able to intervene because it is a scene that takes place at a distance. You will in fact activate the following sequence:
The more the experience is repeated, the more it reinforces values of passivity (‘indifference, acceptance etc.) or cruelty (imitation).
Preserving a certain purity in what you can read or hear is essential if you want to take action to combat injustice.
